President's A ddress. 
27 
course of which his assistant, Mr. Osborne, made this valuable 
discovery for which he was rewarded by Parliament with a 
grant of £1,000. 
It is now acknowledged by those in Europe who are tho 
best authorities in the matter, that to this Colony is due the 
merit of having first originated Photolithography, as now so 
extensively practised at the Crown Lands Office for the re- 
duction and publication of the numerous sale-plans issued to 
the public by that department. 
When first introduced by its inventor, Mr. Osborne, con- 
siderable doubts were expressed as to its practical utility, 
but such doubts may now be considered as set at rest, by the 
fact that the immense numbers of sale plans required by the 
Government in connection with the business of the Crown 
Lands Office are prepared exclusively by this process. 
As an instance of the rapidity with which plans may be 
reduced and copied by it, I may state that upon the passing 
of the Land Act of 1862, upwards of 350 different plans of a 
large size were issued by the aid of Photolithography in the 
space of about four weeks. 
The process is also frequently taken advantage of by the 
other Government departments for the purpose of making 
fac-simile reproductions of valuable documents both in print 
and in manuscript, as the copies arc so minutely exact as to 
render it almost impossible to distinguish them from the 
originals. By this means also copies were made of the 
Chinese writings connected with the peculiar transactions of 
the Chinese merchants with the Custom House here. 
I have dwelt now so long on the applications amongst us 
of the Exact Sciences, that I have scarcely space to say a word 
on the Natural Sciences : — Botany has always flourished 
in this Colony, from the early days before our independent 
existence, when our noble Botanic Garden was laid out 
and adopted as the favourite out of doors resort of the people ; 
and since the appointment of Dr. Muller, the late Secretary 
and former President and Vice-President of our Society, as 
Government Botanist, the more exclusively scientific branches 
of the subject have been cultivated with a success which has 
attracted marked attention and admiration. Durinix the 
past year, as in former ones, the collection of living plants in 
the garden has considerably increased ; but the most impor- 
tant recent addition is the establishment, by the liberality of 
the government, of a Public Herbarium close to the gardens, 
